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The “God-Like Man” Versus the “Best Laws: Politics and Religion in Aristotle's Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Thomas K. Lindsay
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Extract

While Plato's political dialogues give much attention to the relation of the legal and the divine, this subject receives scant notice in Aristotle's Politics. But this is not a sign that Aristotle neglects or dismisses the subject; it is in fact perfectly consistent with what the author understands to be Aristotle's view of the proper political relation of laws and gods. This view emerges indirectly, and only after reflection on the substance and manner of Aristotle's “umpiring” of a staged debate over the rule of the “best laws” versus that of the “best man” (Politics III). From the standpoint of the highest, Aristotle finds law to be both regime-derivative and somewhat prudence-impeding. At the same time, the “apolitical” character of the best man's rule necessitates the rule of law, and with it —for largely utilitarian reasons — Aristotle's public acquiescence in the apotheosis of the legal. But this teaching, and its basis, emerge fully only when the Politics' relative “silence” is interpreted in light of the open statements of a text much less palatable and thus much less accessible to statesmen and citizens (and even to political scientists): the Metaphysics. The Politics' obliqueness, argues the author, owes to the fact that Aristotle's final understanding of the relation of laws and gods cannot be fully disclosed publicly if it is to achieve its end of improving public life.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Summer 1991 , pp. 488 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1991

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References

1. Leviathan, ed. Oakeshott, Michael (New York: Macmillan Pub. Co., 1962), chap. 46, pp. 490–91.Google Scholar

2. The literature generally fails to consider adequately the political implications of the debate over laws versus men. It likewise passes over Aristotle's provocative and unexplained assertion of the primacy of “superintendence” of the “divine.” While Ross, W. D. recognizes the largely apolitical character of the rule of the “best man,” he fails to deal with the political consequences of this fact in relation to law's deification by its defenders. Aristotle (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), pp. 255–57, 66–67.Google ScholarThe same criticism applies to Barker, Ernest, despite his frequent recourse to the theme of law in his analysis of the Politics. The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Barker, Ernest (London: Oxford Press, 1946) cf. pp. lxix–lxxii, 146, 298–300, 366–67.Google Scholar B. Jowett, on the other hand, is properly shocked by the “first” place of religious superintendence. But he makes no effort to answer seriously his own question: “[H]ow could the insertion of such a clause [the “first” duty] ever be explained, unless it had been put in by the piety of a Greek monk?” (The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Jowett, B. [London: Oxford Press, 1885], Vol. II, p. 268).Google Scholar Jowett likewise passes over without comment the deification of law by its defenders (Vol. I, pp. lxvi-lxvii), as does Leyden, W. Von, Aristotle on Equality and Justice (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 84–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. The distinction I draw between the Politics and Metaphysics revolves around their likely audiences and the different modes of addressing them, not around any technical, “exoteric/esoteric” classification of Aristotle's texts. As will be seen, Aristotle, so concerned lest Athens “sin again against philosophy,” felt comfortable openly deriding the city's gods as “myths”—for which opinion Socrates was executed—only in the Metaphysics.

4. In the Introduction to his translation, Lord, Carnes argues convincingly that the Politics' primary audience was “actual or potential wielders of political power” (The Politics [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], p. 10).Google Scholar

5. Unless otherwise indicated, all in-body Bekker references are to the Politics. I have supplied the original Greek with crucial terms and phrases, while following Lord's translation (see note 4).

6. See Barker's, breakdown of this passage, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New York: Russell and Russell, 1959), pp. 328–32.Google Scholar

7. Metaphysics, trans. Tredennick, H. (London: Heinemann Ltd., 1933).Google Scholar

8. I attempt a more detailed examination of Aristotle's understanding of the “political relation” in “Aristotle's Qualified Defense of Democracy Through ‘Political Mixing,’” The Journal of Politics, forthcoming; 54, no. 1 (02 1992).Google Scholar

9. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Rackham, H. (London: Heinemann Ltd., 1982).Google Scholar

10. Cf. Plato Laws 875a-c.

11. On this issue and on the problem of political justice generally in Aristotle, see Ambler, Wayne, “Aristotle's Understanding of the Naturalness of the City,” Review of Politics 47 (1985): 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coby, Patrick, “Aristotle's Four Conceptions of Politics,” Western Political Quarterly 39 (1986): 480–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newell, W. R., “Superlative Virtue: The Problem of Monarchy in Aristotle's Politics,” Western Political Quarterly 40 (1987): 159–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zuckert, Catherine, “Aristotle on the Limits and Satisfactions of Political Life,” Interpretation 11 (1983): 185–206.Google Scholar

12. Rhetoric, trans. Freese, J. H. (London: Heinemann Ltd., 1982).Google Scholar Two thoughtful defenses of Aristotle's view of the rationality of rhetoric are Arnhart's, LarryAristotle on Political Reasoning (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981), pp. 24–32Google Scholar; and Nichols's, Mary P. “Aristotle's Defense of Rhetoric,” Journal of Politics 49 (1987): 657–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. See Strauss’s, Leo discussion of the relation of law and “‘civil theology.’” “On Aristotle’s Politics,” in The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 22–26.Google Scholar

14. My use of the term “religion” needs clarification. Clearly, both to Aristotle and to Greek antiquity this term was unknown. However, one sense in which we understand religion, as “organized and public worship,” doubtless is implied in Aristotle’s prescription of political “superintendence of the things connected with the divine.” Given this qualification, it does not distort Aristotle to compare his project to what we today might call “political religion” (see also 1329a28–30; 1322b17–21).

15. See note 2.

16. Aristotle’s list of the city’s functions ends with the “sixth” and “most necessary thing of all, judgment concerning the advantageous things and the just things...” (1328b13–15). This suggests that the city’s functions are presented in ascending order of importance (see also 1322b30–38). Whether the list represents an ascent or a descent, the “fifth and first” locution retains its simultaneously “high-low” designation, and thus does not contradict my thesis. At the same time, on the basis of an ascending order, superintendence appears to be not “first” in importance but “second” (because listed prior) to the now-“first” (originally “sixth”) function of “judgment concerning” the “just.” This alternative ranking is consistent with my interpretation: Superintendence can be said to be “second” to deliberation about the just because the former is “useful” in bringing the citizens to obey the edicts that result from such deliberation; i.e., it is “second,” or of inferior rank, in the manner that all means are inferior to the ends they serve. But, as I will argue shortly, the “second” or, alternatively, the “fifth” —in either case the ultimately inferior — rank of superintendence cannot be publicized. Rather, superintendence must be viewed publicly to be “first” in importance, i.e., must be viewed to be divinely authorized, and not merely politically expedient, if it is to perform its “useful” function.

17. See Hamburger's, Max discussion of the relation of law and education in Morals and Law: The Growth of Aristotle's Legal Theory (New York: Biblio and Tannen, 1965)Google Scholar, see esp. pp. 56–59, 175–79.

18. Jaffa, Harry V. notes this. “What Is Politics? —An Interpretation of Aristotle's Politics,” in The Conditions of Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), p. 51.Google Scholar

19. See also Metaphysics 994b33–95a6. Yet Aristotle recognizes the problem this poses for needed adaptations in the law. See Nichols, Mary P., Socrates and the Political Community (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), pp. 167–69.Google Scholar

20. See also Pol. 1276a6–7; 1280a2–6; 1283al4-b26; 1287bl536.

21. Jaeger, makes this distinction in Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, pp. 259–92.Google Scholar

22. See Aquinas, Thomas on the relation of phronesis and particularity. Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Litzinger, C. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1964), Vol. II, pp. 574–78.Google Scholar

23. On Aristotle’s silence concerning the philosopher-king, see Dobbs, Darrell D., “Aristotle’s Anticommunism,” American Journal of Political Science 29 (1985): 33–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nichols, , Socrates and the Political Community, pp. 163–64Google Scholar; Saxonhouse, Arlene W., “Family, Polity, and Unity: Aristotle on Socrates’ Community of Wives,” Polity 15 (1982): 212CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Strauss, , City and Man, p. 122.Google Scholar

24. Less important, yet salutary, is music’s capacity to “purge” the soul of destructive passions. In this context, Aristotle cites the “tunes of Olympus,” which “make souls inspired” (poiei tas psuchas enthousiastikas) (1340a8–13; 1341b33–42a16).

25. On the functions of the Nocturnal Council, see Strauss, Leo, The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 175–86.Google Scholar

26. “Concerning Kingship"; cited in Barker, , The Politics, p. 386.Google Scholar This suggests the limits to which Aristotle thinks even prudent statesmen can be made aware of his deepest views. As has been shown, such are not a likely audience for the Metaphysics’ critique of piety, the unblinking and undamaging acceptance of which perhaps only philosophers are fully capable.

27. Both “fasten on a certain sort of justice, but proceed only to a certain point, and do not speak of the whole of justice in its authoritative sense” (Pol. 1280a7–11).